Recreational boating has been historically, and remains, a vast industry catering to recreational boaters and sportsmen who desire to use their leisure time on the water, whether it be on land-locked bodies of water such as lakes, or on the ocean or, in tidal waters including river deltas and estuaries and the like.
Present invention is directed to those recreational boaters and recreational fishermen who do not desire necessarily high speed boating as is conventionally accomplished using rear driven planning boats, but neither do they necessarily desire the intimate solitude of a fisherman in his belly boat slowly paddling about a secluded lake. Rather, the present invention is designed to service a niche falling in between, and in particular where a single watercraft according to the present invention may be used for relatively gentle translation over a body of water, desirably during calm conditions, and where the end use of the boat may be for fishing, or merely to safely join-up as better described below with other such boats for picnicking or other socializing on the boat or platform formed by multiple boats. Social networking and like recreational activity is often now found amongst boaters who tie-up to each other in entirely dissimilar boats while floating as a flotilla offshore so that the people aboard may socialize between various boats in the flotilla including moving between the various boats. It is an object of the present invention to provide for a number of similar or identical open-hulled boats, where each of the boats advantageously is shaped as the same regular polygon in planform, the example being provided with a hexagon planform shape so that numerous such watercraft may interlock to one another to form a safe social networking platform flotilla. Because of their regular polygon shape, additional watercraft may join in easily to add to the mat of watercraft forming the flotilla. The standardizing of the size and shape of the hull, and the use of regular polygons in planform shape for the hulls, provides for ease of interlocking because adjacent gunwales between adjacent watercraft will be substantially at the same elevation, with the exception of relative movement between the two watercraft due to wave action. Thus, adjacent watercraft may be relatively easily swapped for one another in the array of watercraft, and interlocked in generally calm water so as to allow relative movement between them while maintaining safety in the interlocking between adjacent watercraft in the array of such interlocked watercraft by the use of inter-filling flexible strips between adjacent boats. Advantageously the strips are sized and shaped to continuously and contiguously fill-in the gaps between boats to increase the safety for passengers transferring between boats.
In the prior art the applicant is aware of the following United States Patents which are directed to watercraft having hulls with a round planform shape, in the centre of which are mounted a propulsive motor: U.S. Pat. No. 2,826,163 which issued Mar. 11, 1958 to King entitled Circular Boat, U.S. Pat. No. 3,279,417 which issued Oct. 18, 1966 to Moor et al for a water vehicle, U.S. Pat. No. 3,335,436 which issued Aug. 15, 1967 to Sharp for Water-bourn Vessels, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,548,428 which issued on Dec. 22, 1970 to Eades for a Circular Pleasure Boat.
With respect to the latter, Eades discloses a substantially cup or dish-shaped hull provided with a seat extending around the inner periphery of its wall. Upstanding walls centrally connected to the bottom of the hull define a vertical motor accommodating opening extending through the bottom of the hull. Rams raise and lower the motor. The motor is intended to be a small outboard type motor for moving the boat and manipulating the boat so that the boat will spin or rotate about its vertical axis. The boat is intended for use in relatively shallow waters adjacent to shore. Airtight compartments, forming the seats and reinforcing ribs, add to the buoyancy of the boat. A pair of parallel spaced apart reinforcing ridges 18 are mounted so as to depend from the surface of the substantially flat-like bottom of the boat.